Horseface
Created by Alex Dallas
Produced by Alex Dallas Productions, Toronto
Review by Brian Carroll
52 min / 14+ / Storytelling, Comedy, Drama, Solo / Mature language, Sexual content, Violence
Margaret Atwood wrote, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” 148 women were killed in Canada last year.
How do you turn those sobering thoughts into a show? If you’re Fringe veteran Alex Dallas, you turn to humour. Humour interspersed with chilling scenes of terror. Grab the audience. Make them laugh. When you’ve softened them up, plant some cold reality on them. Rinse and repeat. Each time heat up the humour. Each time, ice the room and chill with a slice of reality.
Dallas was christened Alexandra. Her parents shortened this to “Sondra”. They admonished her, “Don’t make a fuss, Sondra.” Her brother could start a fight, but they gave her tighter limits: never kick a man in the balls.
But she shortened her name to Alex and DID make a fuss. Over the decades, her female experience of men has provided her with plenty of material for this show.
The title of the show comes from a teenage incident. A WWII desert Africa veteran and incompetent maths teacher called Alex’s shy classmate a “horse-faced useless cretin.” As Alex puts it: “I had the balls to tell a desert rat to f*** off.”
Alex’s parents hid much from her as she grew up: her father’s pornography collection, her real father, and how men would presume to have their way with her. Her parents taught her nothing about how to keep the wolves at bay.
Why should you see this show?
- It’s funny.
- Women laugh, sometimes convulsively.
- The humour leavens the deadly serious interludes.
- Women recognize events from their own or friends’ lives.
- Men laugh.
- Men get a lot of insight into the affronts that women face every day.
- And did I say it’s funny?
Horseface is playing at Venue 4 – Studio 1201 (1st floor, 60 Waller Street) until Saturday June 22, 2024. Tickets are $14 plus service fees online, at the Fringe box office (3rd floor, Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue), and at the two satellite box offices (LabO in the Ottawa Art Gallery and La Nouvelle Scene). 5 and 10 Show Passes are also available. Visit the Ottawa Fringe Festival’s website for the show’s schedule and check out their online schedule here.
